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Jay-Z’s Wild West   no comments

MCHGRemember those things called compact discs? Yea, you know- Those flimsy round things that came a few years after the cassette tape, and thousands of years after our parents chiseled sound into “vinyl records” with their cavemen friends? OK, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but when was the last time you bought a physical CD? How about an entire album on iTunes?

We all know that technology is rapidly changing. Not only has the platform of which we listen to music changed, but the way we listen to music has changed.

Long gone are the days where people sit down and enjoy an album song by song. Album sales have plummeted and the power of the single is rising with every “Call Me Maybe.”

“We don’t have any rules. Everyone’s trying to figure it out. That’s why the Internet is like the Wild West. We need to write the new rules for what’s going on right now,” said rapper and business mogul, Shawn Carter (AKA Jay-Z).

Jay-Z is the new sheriff in town and he is taking over the Wild West of the Internet, and creating a new way to sell his album.

In June, during game five of the NBA Finals, Jay-Z not-so-casually dropped the news to millions of viewers that his new album “Magna Carta Holy Grail,” would be released on the 4th of July to one million Samsung Galaxy customers via an app. Jay-Z is almost single-handedly turning fans of an artist into customers of a product, while still trying to keep the integrity of the album.

He is here to put a death to auto-tune and a resurrection to the “album,” where realistically he will make millions of dollars somewhere in between. The app is packaged nicely with pictures and lyrics- like a CD or album- but also intertwines videos and a way for Samsung to track your age and location (because not doing that is sooo 2008).

“The whole thing I wanted to do was have that fireplace or that radio moment where everyone’s just sitting in front of the thing listening to an album,” Carter goes on. “I want everyone to hear the album at one time.”

While I think most customers who are targeted to buy this album will have too short of an attention span to do so (especially with cellphone in hand), it is a great marketing scheme and an innovative way to start and push music where it may be heading.

 

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Written by Dylan on July 9th, 2013

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